“He’s upstairs.” “Why?” Arnold hesitated. “Because he asked us not to contact you.”

I felt as though someone had slapped me. “Not to contact me?”

He nodded slowly. “He specifically told us that if you came looking for him, we should give him time.”

I laughed—an ugly, humorless sound. I looked down at the lunch bag in my hand. The apple pie suddenly seemed ridiculous. I had spent twenty minutes slicing the apples exactly the way he liked them. Now I was standing in the hospital while my husband was apparently hiding from me.

“Arnold,” I whispered, “what is happening?”

Arnold looked away and handed me a small white envelope. My name was written across the front in Ben’s handwriting. On the back were three words: Please forgive me.

“What did he do?” I asked.

“Ben has been coming here after his shifts,” Arnold confessed. “He’s been treating patients for free—people without insurance. But one of those patients died. A seven-year-old girl named Emily.”

My heart stopped. Inside the envelope was a letter from Ben:

My love, if you are reading this, I wasn’t brave enough to tell you myself. For the past eleven months, I have been trying to save someone who cannot be saved. Emily’s parents died in a car accident. I promised her mother I would not let her become another number on a waiting list, so I started paying for her treatment myself. But someone discovered what I was doing… someone who did not want Emily treated.

If anything happens to me, don’t trust—

The sentence ended abruptly.

“Where is Ben now?” I demanded.

“Room 814,” Arnold replied, trembling. “But Emily disappeared last night. And Ben was the last person seen with her.”

I stepped into the elevator. On the floor, I noticed a tiny handwritten note: She knows who took me. And underneath it was a single name: BEN…